In the last article, we sketched out the boundaries of a hidden world. (Quick recap: A hidden world is (usually) a world that seems much like our own, but that’s just an illusion. However, the “modern world” isn’t what it seems… for some reason. Compelling reasons include conspiracies secretly running things, aliens quietly interfering, supernatural forces existing and meddling with the world, or even this reality being but one of many.)
Welcome Behind the Curtain
One of the most influential decisions you can make for a hidden world campaign is determining the PCs’ experience with the “deeper world” at the start of the game. If one character has experience dealing with alien horrors, the other PCs may ignore their colleague, or have the local loonie bin on speed dial after his ravings–but that experience will make our experienced hand the group’s natural leader (or at least their sage) once the PCs come to believe in the unseen world. More common are the other two extremes: all PCs begin the campaign unaware of the secret world, or all PCs beginning in the know. Let’s look at some of these cases. 
A Hidden Hidden World
In this setting, players make ordinary people who begin the game unaware of the hidden world. During play at the table, the characters will encounter the conspiracy, meet aliens, or learn that reality is tissue thin. This can be very engaging play, and it’s dead simple to introduce even a complex setting if the players learn about it at the same pace as their characters. Mysteries–like learning who is a part of the conspiracy, identifying the planeswalker’s goals, and mastering the complicated rules of n-space–can be compelling, especially since it’s not just a “whodunnit”, but is a revelation of a complex world.
Experienced Characters
If you return to a setting that you’ve already explored, you’ll often want to make characters who engage with the setting. In most campaigns, the GM appreciates player histories: it helps when a player explains where in Sembia their character grew up, that they learned their cantrips from a local sorceress named Minerva, and how they prepared for their life of adventure. A drawback is that “adventurers” rather than “locals” are the result of that process. If your character knows that her brother is Bleys, then Bleys visiting town is a reunion, not a mystery.
Experienced characters are great for short campaigns, where the excitement comes from grappling with this strange world. Roleplayers can enjoy roleplaying with the knowledge developed in previous campaigns without having to “handicap themselves” by having their characters do things that the player knows are a bad idea, or going through the motions of “discovering” something as a PC that the player already knows. Though as Nojo explains, sometimes the game encourages you to change the facts. That lets you discover what this world’s vampires are like, with a real sense of terror and anticipation, even though the game system is familiar.
Preludes
Preludes are a hybrid technique, where characters generated as experienced PCs are played at an earlier moment. There are many good ways to play preludes; sometimes the prelude is a key scene or two for the character, while at other times a character’s prelude for might last for hours, significantly developing (or deepening) the feeling of the “normal” character before they were twisted by their exposure to the hidden world.
While it’s a separate technique, flashbacks can be another way to explore what a character was like before the hidden world changed them. Both techniques can been seen as a compromise; a way to explore the innocent character, but with the full knowledge that the character will engage with the hidden world fully, without a lot of delay or duplication of “discovery”.
Mixed Experience
If they’re game, players can approach the setting with characters various degrees of clued in. Much like “experienced characters” and “preludes” above, it’s unlikely that the naive character’s player will be in the dark for long; when another character contacts the mastermind, or invokes forbidden magic, the player is exposed and would have to work to keep the information away from her PC.
This can be a very good setup for bringing inexperienced players into the game with less upfront investment; they don’t have to know much about the setting to make a good character, and the other characters will probably teach the new recruit “the truth” to make them a more effective ally. The main drawback: the player of the clueless character can be marginalized, because their character has less to offer the rest of the PCs. They haven’t mastered mystic kung-fu, so they need to be protected in fights; or they never studied ancient Sanskrit, so there’s no reason to buy them a ticket to Hyderabad. This isn’t hard to address, but the GM and other players should keep this in mind.
New Games
If you play in a new setting or game system, all of options are back on the table. Players who were a master of the old setting will find themselves naturally exploring the new one. You might encourage players not to read the new setting material–or even game system–if you’re keeping the hidden world under wraps and plan on revealing it in play.
The Supernatural Dial?
Next time grasshopper. Next time.
Your Techniques
Do you love games and plots that assume experienced characters? Do you revel in slowly revealing the world in game, spacing out your revelations to keep your players guessing–or proclaiming their mastery, only to see their confidence collapse as they discover an even deeper layer? As a player, do you have have any recommendations for recapturing that sense of discovery for your characters, even when you’ve already seen reality revealed a dozen times? Do you insist on playing experienced, engaged characters? Even in brand new settings or rules systems?
Rite Publishing’s Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG) is built to keep players in the dark about it’s true nature, especially regarding the ‘afterlife’ and ‘reincarnation’, the nature of ghosts, and the true nature of the social caste system. Most will only discover the truth upon PC death and even then some of the mystery remains. Not even the divine classes are fully aware of what is going on. The GM’s guide describes the settings truth, while the player’s guide tells the general lie that inhabitants of Kaidan believe.
I’ve posted a detailed description of what is really going on at The Piazza (Old D&D campaign worlds) forum, here:
http://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=9052&p=124690#p124690
How do you think repeated campaigns in the world will work, once the secret is out? Do you think players will eagerly make later characters who believe the incorrect player’s book knowledge, or do you think they’ll drift their new PCs’ concepts to ones that don’t have to believe incorrect information?
Honestly, I couldn’t say. I’d think that once they’ve experienced a character(s) existence across multiple life times – they could get used it. Accruing positive or negative karma points is within the control of the PC – his/her actions affect his karma score, and one could knowingly build his karma score to raise from Commoner to Samurai status in the next life, or Commoner down to Yokai (so they could play a non-human). Beyond that however there is a tandomness that comes with reincarnation, so they couldn’t created an intended PC build – say going from samurai caste to commoner with the intention of becoming a ninja. The rules don’t let you get that specific. The reincarnation roll at death points to the new class your reborn character will have. Of course if a GM hand-waves that part of the rules, it might be less randon. Because there is always a danger of becoming a yurei ghost, that too skews any planned builds. One could continue as an undead party member with a ghost template, in the hopes they could be laid to rest and move on toward their next life to continue the cycle.
(Forgot to say) – regarding PCs with knowledge of the truth of the afterlife, talking about it is heretical. Agents of the empire and shogunate, including Metsuki secret police (inquisitors), are always in search for breaches of imperial law. Speaking of the truth of reincarnation is very heretical and could lead to incarceration or even locking ones’s spirit down so that death is a final death disallowing reincarnation. I suppose a PC could know the truth, ‘keep it to themselves’ with hidden goals of a planned existence in the reincarnation cycle – and play it that way. It’s an individuals call on how that’s handled.
I like settings where the characters are normal or slightly above normal people who discover that the world is not what it seems, so #1 is an obvious fit.
However, for the Mixed Experience there is a great mechanic you could steal from Savage Worlds – the grizzled veteran. In D&D terms it would be a Feat that allows the character to start out at, say, level 3 or 4; everyone else starts out at level 1. It makes sense that a person who has faced this kind of thing (whatever it is) before would have more experience, after all! But the character still starts at 0 XP and doesn’t level up until they have gotten enough to pay for the free levels. This lets the others catch up so that the first character doesn’t stay ahead forever. In a way they are helping the new characters until they are equal, except that in true narrative form the new ones actually end up slightly “more equal”, since the first character has one less Feat to use.
That sounds like a reasonable work around for D&D; I’ll have to look into how Savage Worlds handles it in its original form. The grizzled veteran is a storied archetype–we just have to make sure that he’s not required to die, Anime style–so our heroes can show how much they’ve grown!